Youthful Ambitions

I was in training yesterday afternoon. Not the sweaty and puffing kind of training, it was the cerebral kind. I volunteered recently for a course in recuitment selection procedures. This is not the kind of thing I would normally associate myself with. Especially as it seems mostly to be concerned with the wishy-washy, trendy-lefty political correctness issues of race and gender and disability.

If such a thing as a political minefield could be said to exist then it is alive and well in the tangle of laws that we have to protect minorities of all shapes and sizes and hues from ... [ta-da!] Social Exclusion

Ye Gods! We spent almost an hour trying to define 'social exclusion'! What the hell is the point of coining an expression if no-one can define it? I ventured my opinion that social exclusion was a fancy word for lack of financial resources, that being a fancy way of saying poverty. There were a lot of arguments put forward as to reasons why poverty was just a single factor in "social exclusion", none held water, in my opinion.

A man with no legs and no money is bound to feel exlcuded from society if he is unable to travel wherever he wishes. Give him enough cash, I argued, and he can do anything he wants. Of course that is an empirically glib analysis. If we all had a million Bill Gates would still be rich. Towns and cities would still have nice neighbourhoods and scuzzy ones. Shops would still divide us into classes by taste. Some hanker for oysters and foie gras others are much happier with a bastardised pizza made with chunks of boiled pig and slices and canned pineapple.

The other day I was dragged kicking and screaming to my local mall. It's one of Britain's biggest and it's only a mile from home which are the prime reasons I cite for not having been there in more than 5 years ... not counting occasional visits to the mall's Oort cloud of warehouses such as PC World. I must be the only woman on the planet who can be led through and endless series of clothing shops -- ranging from chique through chic to the execrable "chick" and emerge with wallet unopened. My companion, bless her, seemed mildly to be worried by my thrift ... or else by my fussy hard-to-please-ness; I wasn't sure then and I am not now. Anyway we ended up at the back of a place that specialises in remaindered designer gear and seconds and (frankly) thirds ... or do I mean turds?

I felt that I had surely disconcerted Angela more than enough with my clothing reticence as she fell upon the displays of gewgaws and other kitsch domestic ephemera with the glee of a child in a toy shop so I joined with her in admiring the African carvings and Chinese pottery and rustic (recycled packing-case) furniture.

So there I was, yesterday musing this over, both internally and vocally. We are not equal. We can never be. But still I see there is a great need for anyone who is involved in selecting a person from amongst a number of candidates to be both fair and dispassionate. This is the goal of the equal opportunity programmes. To try to lead us to a point at which we can feel comfortable that we have tried our hardest to leave our own prejudices out of our decision making process.

Afterwards I was waiting at the bus station hoping, without much optimism, for a bus that would actually go past my house. There are two regular services, one goes past my home, the other turns off half a mile before it. Guess which one always comes first? I was joined there by one of my fellow trainees. I toyed with trying to construct a convincing sounding apology for not having waited for him; that I hadn't realised that he used also used the buses and that we could have walked there together (I had in fact walked there with two others who closer to my own age.) Andrew (not his real name) is a much younger man; I can give him 30 years and still have years that amount to more than small change! Slowly it dawned on me that apology wasn't needed. Andrew was young and such things did not matter to him. He joked that rushing to the bus station had only earned me a longer wait. I agreed but countered that at I was at least warmed up. This was only partly true. I had rushed out of the house earlier without scarf or gloves or hat and it was now sub-zero by windchill and my coat is more style than substance.

"Now who's the syle victim?" I thought savagely, mocking my own shopping prejudices of a few days earlier, as I thought about the rack of lovely thick parkas with the remarkably low prices I had so casually shunned.

As we waited, Andrew chatted with the unselfconscious enthusiasm of the young for whom the future is as dark and mysterious and inviting as the Congo and Amazon basins were to early European explorers. Not for him the doubts and worries of mundane things like practicality. No! He had his next ten years all mapped out, from college to VSO to post-graduate doctorate to seat on the board ....

It all sounded so simple. If only life were like that. By then we were on our bus. I had listened quietly and respectfully to his plans. I applauded his enthusiasm without passing opinion. Then he delivered his own coup de grace.

"Or maybe", he said mischeviously. "I'll fall at the first post, drop out and die before I'm 25 of a drugs overdose."

I snorted softly with wry amusement and said something that seemed apt and wise and urbane but was none of those things. What I really wanted to say was something about the wonderful all or nothing approach of the young. But we had reached his stop and I had the seat to myself for the next few minutes before I too had leave the bus's steamy interior go where the PTE's buses only go when I don't want one.

Listening to Cynthia Jordan ... because I like piano and free music is never to be sniffed at.